Hi,
I am currently undecided between these 4 schools. Pitt and Rutgers are incredibly cheap for me, and I got into both the honors colleges there. While UVA is about 40k more expensive, I loved the campus and Charlottesville, and I feel that if pre-med does not work out for me, the statistics program at UVA (my intended major) is much better there. However, as of now, the end goal is to go to a top medical school. Who should I choose?
Hello! I definitely think you should choose between Pitt and Rutgers since they are both incredibly great schools and you also don’t want to be compiled with loans/debt as an undergrad. I wish you the best of luck with your decision!
One of the strong features for Pitt is the strong network of outstanding hospitals located there and probable opportunities to get involved in some capacity
cataratatc506
Thank you! But if my parents are willing to pay for my undergrad, would it be worth it to go to UVA. However, I di not want my parents to pay a large sum of money for something that gives the same opportunities as a much cheaper institution.
Op
Obviously UVA is a higher ranking school of the three, but for med school admission, there is no difference in any of them. Med school is all about high stats, high Mcat and dedicated medical Ec.
If your parents are willing to pay for uva, and if you will be happy there, by all mean, go there.
Thank you!
But I have heard the pre med required courses are much harder to do well in some colleges than they are in others; is there any truth to this claim, and if so, which one of my schools is this true in?
Its difficult to say, the hard or easy of a pre-req course is different from professor to professor. In those large Univ.(and all your selections are large), intro courses are attended by 100’s students each class. The professors cannot hand out 100’s As, therefore, all pre-reqs are hard to get As, it does not matter which school you attend.
Ok, makes sense. Thank you!
Are you instate to either rutgers or pitt?
If you want to stay in your home state for medical school (save money at NJMS or RWJ which are both amazing schools) that might be a leg up to go to rutgers honors program, same for Pitt if wanting to stay there and they have a 7 year program with the DO school- LECOM. However, I hear rutgers is very difficult to do well in the science courses with huge class sizes, but if you made it into honors i’m sure you will do great.
UVA is obviously the more prestigious school, but within NJ rutgers honors is well known and prestigious as well, and will save you money. UVA is probably a more fun/ pretty campus vibe than the other two schools.
Ultimately where you go won’t matter much towards medical school acceptance it will be how you succeed at those individual schools.
Ok, makes sense. Thank you. I am a PA resident, so Pitt would be my in state school. However, I have heard in-state tuition for PA public medial schools are as a whole not much cheaper than out of state tuition. When you say within NJ Rutgers honors is considered prestigious, do you mean that it is not considered as prestigious in other neighboring states?
No I just meant if you were going to target the NJ medical schools, they would realize that thats a difficult program to get into. I’m not sure how well known going to the honors program would be outside of NJ. Rutgers in general is known to be a really good state school though.
Even if PA public medical schools are not cheaper, I more so mean they accept more in state students, so it’ll be easier to get into, and especially so if you stayed in state for college.
Staying in-state for undergrad gives the med school more hope you’ll stay in-state as a doctor, and some med schools do consider this.
Oh ok this makes a lot of sense, thank you!
Interesting point, I never thought of that. Thank you!
You are in the great state of pa for med schools. Not only you have the top med school - UPenn but also you have medium level med schools like Pitts and you have lots of lower level schools including TCMC and they all pretty much in favor of IS applicants.
So if you do well in UG then the sky is your limit, however if you are on the boarderline TCMC or Commonwealth is not a bad school.
Whether you pick Pitt or Rutgers if you do well, medicine is a high possibility.
I just have a few comments. UVA is one of the top Public Universities in the country along with schools such as UCB, UCLA and Michigan. Doing well at UVA will in many cases give you a slight leg up towards medicine or many other fields. Pittsburgh is solid but mostly a commuter school. Rutgers is average and also a commuter school. Doing well at any of your choices however can get you to where you want to go.
Pennsylvania is not a great state for medical schools if you are a Pa resident. Penn is top notch but private and while Penn gives a slight advantage to “locals” it is not that much of an advantage. Pittsburgh is one of the top medical schools in the country and is not a mid tier medical school. It is the equivalent of school such as Michigan and U of Washington. Pitt gives a slight preference to Pa residents but only about a third of the students are in state. Moreover, tuition is about the same in state or out of state. Penn state and Temple also give little tuition benefit for in state and take many out of state students. According to my last tech who attends Penn state, only about a third of her class is from Pa. Jefferson and Drexel are both private. if your four year cost of College is 40 K more at UVA than Pitt or Rutgers and your parents are willing to pay the total freight, I would go to the school you like best.
Penn definitely does not have an in state bias. They might have a lot of PA residents but I bet their applicant pool is skewed towards PA residents and the admissions rate is the same as any other state.
If curious about the in state bias, look at AAMC’s page here:
https://www.aamc.org/download/321442/data/factstablea1.pdf
There is a minor bias at most schools (largest at Geisinger or Temple), but that bias is not as large as states like OK or OR (for two examples alphabetically close). Nonetheless, for each school, the percentage of in state matriculants is greater than the percentage of in state applicants. Costs are still quite high. We never found any instate school to give much of a cost benefit to my in state lad (who now goes to med school OOS at his undergrad Alma mater URoc).
If I were the OP, I suspect Pitt would be my favorite of the choices, but only they know if their parents can afford the 40K for UVA or if they are stretching their budget (or savings) to do so. If it’s truly affordable, I don’t see a difference.
Pennsylvania’s medical schools do not have strong in-state bias. Pitt, Penn State and Temple aren’t true public med schools. They’re public-private hybrids where the state of PA partially subsidizes X number of seats for state residents. (Rather like TX does with Baylor and DE does with Jefferson.) T
Geisinger is a private med schools and does not have in-state bias, but tends to accept a higher rate of PA residents because they are the ones that best fit the stated mission of the school–which is provide physicians for the underserved central and NE regions of the state.
OP–pick the undergrad that has provided you the best FA package. Med school is expensive and you want to minimize any debt you’re taking with into med school.